Vietnam welcomes Chinese travellers

HANOI, 12 January 2023: International visitor arrivals to Vietnam during 2022 peaked at 3,440,019, up 98.186% over the 2021 total, according to the latest data from the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Arrivals for December 2022 reached 707.071, up 18,5% over November 2022 and increasing 22.8% over December 2021.

It’s the first time that VNAT has posted a full year’s data with a breakdown by countries since the global Covid-19 pandemic locked down international tourism from March 2020 through to April 2022.

Before the travel lockdown, China was consistently the first or second-highest provider of travellers visiting Vietnam.

However, arrivals from China, mainly family or business-related travel, clocked just 71,862 trips during 2022, according to the VNAT chart, while Korea generated 767,167 trips. Even ASEAN’s outbound travel markets supplied more tourists to Vietnam than China in 2022 – Thailand 162,567 trips, Cambodia 140,461, Malaysia 135,007 and Singapore 128,399. The question Vietnam’s tourism industry will be asking is how long will it take for China to become the top supplier of leisure travellers once more? All eyes will be on China’s Lunar New Year holiday week that starts on 22 January. If forecasts are correct, the recovery of China’s outbound travel market could accelerate within weeks. That will put considerable pressure on Asia’s airlines to reinstate routes and add flights to China much faster than earlier forecasts had opined.

Vietnam’s tourism leaders convened for a timely summit on 9 January hosted by the Vietnam Tourism Association in collaboration with Quang Ninh Province themed “Solutions to attract Chinese tourists to Vietnam” just a day after China reopened tourism.

The summit was attended by Nguyen Trung Khanh, VNAT chairman,  Vu The Binh Vietnam Tourism Association chairman, Pham Ngoc Thuy, Quang Ninh Province’s Department of Tourism director, and Hoang Ba Nam Mong Cai City Party Committee secretary.

Pre-Covid-19 era, China was the world’s largest tourism source market delivering an estimated 155 million outbound trips in 2019 with a spend of USD255 billion.

The VNAT chairman spotlighted the ASEAN region’s efforts to exploit the China outbound travel market as it begins recovery after a two-year pause.

China is always the largest tourist source market of Vietnam, with more than 5.8 million visitor arrivals in 2019, accounting for 30% of the total number of international visitor arrivals to Vietnam.

The summit concluded that the “adjustment of China’s policy on pandemic prevention and the lifting of travel restrictions on 8 January 2023 is a positive signal for the tourism industry in the early days of 2023.”

VNAT’s Chairman asked localities and businesses to prepare the best service to welcome Chinese tourists and to ensure pandemic prevention. He said it was vital to build tourism products and services in line with the needs and preferences of Chinese tourists in a post-pandemic era while upgrading tourism facilities, enhancing tourism promotion and developing a promotional website in Chinese.

Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, Vu The Binh said it was important to exploit the opportunities as the China market reopens and ensure the implementation of strict regulations on Covid-19 prevention.

(Source: TITC)